Content Curated by Darin R. McClure 2010-2013
This site hase ceased to function now that Google Reader has closed.
I am going to use the time that I was viewing what others have created, into creating something new of my own... ...So long, and thanks for all the RSS. https://medium.com/@DarinRMcClure

Sunday, April 7, 2013

On a recent episode of his HBO show, Bill Maher created a "new
rule" concerning libertarians:

Libertarians have to stop ruining libertarianism! Or at least do
a better job of explaining the difference between today's
libertarian and just being a selfish prick. Now, many years ago on
a television network far, far away, I expressed support for
libertarianism because back then it meant I didn't want big
government in my bedroom, in my medicine chest, and especially not
in the second drawer of the nightstand on the left side of my bed.
And I still believe that. But somewhere along the way,
libertarianism morphed into this creepy obsession with free-market
capitalism based on an Ayn Rand called Atlas Shrugged, a book
that's never been read all the way through by anybody with a
girlfriend....
Libertarians also hate Medicare and Social Security and there
are problems with those programs but here's the thing: It beats
stepping over lepers and watching human skeletons shit in the river
and I also like not seeing those things. I’m selfish that way!

Hat tip: Mediaite's
Josh Feldman and Garrett
Quinn.Watch the whole bit before
weighing in. Sure, Maher's rant is filled with
various cliches (Ayn Rand, nerd jokes, conflation of regulation and
safety, etc) and elisions. It's also funny - and a pretty
interesting and coherent glimpse into the way that libertarians are
viewed by left-leaning liberals. Maher stresses that he didn't
"leave libertarianism"; rather the movement went "nuts."
You can dismiss everything he says easily, logically,
emotionally and bring up all the myriad ways in which he's just
WRONG WRONG WRONG and how he's really a COMMIE DOUCHEBAG who hates
womenz and all that (that is what unmoderated comments sections are
for, right?).
But for anybody interested in growing the influence and impact
of liberatarian ideas, it's worth thinking about the ways in which
the libertarian identity fails to move a guy who is
anti-prohibition, anti-empire (belatedly!), pro free expression,
and pro-much more that falls in line with a libertarian
perspective. For better or worse, a Venn diagram of Maher and
libertarianism is going to show a huge amount of overlap on things.
The same is common among right-wingers too, where many people agree
with libertarians on anywhere from 50 percent to 90 percent of
issues but recoil from any association with the label or the
beautiful, clean-smelling, super-smart, and just-swell folks who
self-identify as libertarian.
Without betraying core values, are there ways we can reach these
simpatico folks on the right or the left, so as to kickstart
(perpetuate!) what Matt Welch and I once bravely called "The
Libertarian Moment" and wrote
a whole book about?